[35] Se acogía al remedio à que otros muchos perdidos en aquella ciudad (Sevilla) se acogen, que es el al pasarse a las Indias, refugio y amparo de los desesperados de España.
[36] Some accounts state that whilst in La Mancha, Cervantes got involved in a street quarrel in the town of Argamasilla, and that in consequence of that affair he once more became the inmate of a jail. This, coupled with a hint, though a very vague one, thrown out by Cervantes himself, in the preface to the second part of Don Quixote has given rise to the conjecture that the first part was written in a prison.
[37] According to some accounts it was not published till 1605. But 1604 is the date recorded by Don Antonio de Pellicer.
[38] “Salió a la luz del mundo con general aplauso de las gentes.”—Don Quixote, part II.
[39] Everyone who has read Don Quixote in Spanish must be sensible of the peculiar charm of the diction of Cervantes. On this subject, the critic above quoted observes, “It is the style of the old romances of chivalry improved and applied in a totally original way; and only in the dialogue passages is each person found to speak as he might be expected really to do, in his own character.” The speech of the shepherdess Marcella is, by the same high authority, pronounced to be, “in the true prose style of Cicero, and altogether a composition which has seldom been equalled in any modern language.”
[40] Mayans y Siscar and Pellicer quote this anecdote on the authority of Baltasar Porreño, who wrote a work entitled Sayings and Doings (Dichos y Hechos) of Philip III. As the incident, recorded in the anecdote, is stated to have taken place in Madrid, it must have occurred after the year 1606, when the Court removed from Valladolid to the capital.
[41] Cervantes was at this time fifty-seven. The deposition vaguely says, más de cincuenta años (more than fifty years).
[42] The fac-simile engraved with the portrait which illustrates this volume, is from the signature affixed to this document.
[43] Yo soy el primero que he novelado en la lengua castellana; las muchas novelas que en ella andan impresas todas son traducidas de lenguas extrangeras; y estas son mias propias, no imitadas ni hurtadas: mi ingenio las engendró, y las parió mi pluma, y van creciendo en los brazos de la estampa.—Viaje del Parnaso.
[44] Eight Plays and Interludes.